Soul and Personality

Wisdom Teachings
Fundamentals of Spiritual Life

Behind all forms is hidden the light of the soul. In order to experience its presence we have to take off the wraps which envelop it. By our essential nature we are souls, descending day by day into the mind, the senses and objectivity, because we want to make experiences and because it gives us joy. As souls we express ourselves in the outer through the personality. Living in the personality however we easily fall out of the awareness of our existence. We forget and lose ourselves into that which we ourselves are not. Like with a thick layer of dust over a bulb we cover ourselves with increasingly dense layers, and the inner light can no longer shine through. Thus the body consciousness obscures the soul, and we become prisoners of our own system. In a worldly man the soul is in a deep sleep, the personality has to go through its own experiences.

In the personality the three qualities of the soul – Will, Love and Intelligent Activity – are reflected in the personality in a distorted form. The divine Will becomes desire, the divine Love and Wisdom become emotion and emotional understanding; the intelligent Activity becomes the concrete, intellectual thinking and acting. Our mind wants to be fed with information; modern education crams us with facts from all directions of objectivity. Our concrete mind is entirely aligned with the personality and the outer world. Like this our understanding forms everything according to its own structure. We gather concepts and lock ourselves up in firm views and convictions. The soul is much bigger than our mind, only part of it lives in the physical form. Although it tries to work through our body, it is not restricted to it. If we try to circumscribe the program of the soul with our mind, it is as if a mosquito tries to devour an elephant.

The lower mind can organize, the higher can intuitively assimilate things. If our lower mind remains active, we cannot receive higher inspiration. That’s why most people aren’t ready to listen to advice or suggestions of inspired persons. Continuously busy with mental activity we restlessly bustle about. Even wisdom subjects we approach in the same manner with over-activity: What we know theoretically from books thus evaporates when it comes to everyday action. In spite of nice-sounding terminologies of wisdom we remain filled with worries and problems.

With perseverance we have to practise the fundamental steps and put them into day-to-day action; otherwise we will be thrown out of wisdom again and again. Wisdom should help us to enter into soul awareness. If we come to like it, we have to take it into the inner being and to assimilate it: Whereas we take in knowledge from the outside, wisdom unfolds from within. The fundamental practice for this is to keep on visualizing that we are souls, to perceive the soul in all and to see that we act as souls.

Experiencing the soul is like experiencing the waves in the ocean. The soul is the ocean, and the souls are the waves. The soul is the I-AM-consciousness, which is also called the universal soul. In the East and the West it is called by many names; some of them might appeal to us, to others we are perhaps allergic. In a scientific language we speak of this energy as It or That. If we understand how we are, we understand how It is.

When the alignment to the soul is continuously with us, our personality gets transformed and rearranged. Being active as souls thus becomes a habit for us. Here the emphasis is placed more on rhythmical work than on a strong use of the mind. Rhythm brings about order, and order in us, in our house and at the workplace promotes the rhythm. It is only through a stable rhythm that we can get more into the inner being. Rhythm has an electric and magnetic effect, through which the soul can express itself. The soul works rhythmically, the personality however at first doesn’t have a rhythm, it is unregulated and resists a discipline. We therefore find rhythm a constraint in the beginning and it is difficult for us to stick to it. But through its magnetic influence the soul draws the personality upwards, and the personality gets an increasingly active rhythm. Its aspiration carries the personality upwards.

The rhythm of the soul is much faster than that of the personality. If the personality doesn’t adjust to it, crises arise. Thus we go through many conflicts and problems, while the seeking soul awakens in us. For a long time we toss about between the personality and the soul consciousness, first we are happy, then depressed. By constancy and a stable peace of mind enlightenment can drip in and thus be available for practical service. Practical service is that service which is done through conscious understanding of the needs of others. When during serving there is no contact with the soul, the practical sense of service is lost.

However, not all can submit to the same rhythm, for example to meditate at 6 o’clock in the morning. Each soul should decide for itself which kind of rhythm it wants to live or not, in order to gain its own experiences. Normally a group consists of members following more or less a similar rhythm, which gives something like a general agreement. If the rhythm of the group isn’t agreeable to someone, it is better he finds a group which suits him. Otherwise it gives pain to him and to the group. When we love the soul, we let it have the freedom to come and to go like it is appropriate to it. We believe that the way we go is the right one. But it is arrogant to think that there is only one group or one teaching to experience soul energy; the soul has millions of possibilities. In the spiritual realm the respect for the individual soul is very high.

Through soul consciousness the sense of discrimination grows in us. We then proceed more from the point of view of the other persons, we listen more and let them express themselves. We try to find out what their real needs are – often they don’t even know it clearly themselves. As long as we live in the personality and the mind prevails, we are anxious to speak ourselves and to bring out our own opinions.

He who works as a soul acts beyond the understanding and the mental capacity of those who receive help and energy. Most actions of initiates aren’t know to their contemporaries, they really can only be understood by those who are active on the soul plane. Therefore they also don’t offer explanations, because these wouldn’t be understood. Those receiving help from their work mostly don’t know how it happens, even if they might feel that it is good for them. Therefore the Great Souls mainly work secretly.

Sources used: K. P. Kumar: The Aquarian Cross / seminar notes. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India.